


Tents

by Debi_C



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 11:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debi_C/pseuds/Debi_C
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel musings.  There are mention of both het and slash included. Discussion of Ascension, reference to drug use and lots of angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tents

One of the first sounds he could ever remember was the whisper of the wind against the yielding walls of black goat hair tent. It flowed over the compliant surface, bending and shaping the soft mohair barrier to its will with only the poles and the stakes of wood and hempen rope to deny its gentle insistence. 

There had been other sounds, the voices of his parents as they spoke in hushed tones late at night discussing what they had found that day and planned to do the next. Then, after the oil lamps were blown out, the muted noises of their passion as they celebrated their lives and their love for one another.

Then, with the morning light there came the voices of the workers themselves. The chorus was raised in the polyglot babble as natives and foreigners alike bestired and moved towards the work site. The languages of French, Italian, German, English, and a plethora of Arabic dialects from different countries, tribes and religions were called out. In the distance he could hear the loud vocal protestations of a camel being loaded with equipment and the roar of a diesel engine. 

It's odor was of heat, the scent of steam rising off of the top of the tent when the hot sun baked the early morning dew out of the black woolen fibers. The smell of the desert coming off of the dunes, and every once in a while the scent of the Nile cool, clean and fishy would waft in through the opening that served as the door into their life. The deep aroma of the thick heady Egyptian coffee as it steeped, the perfume his mother wore, the tangy scent of his father's sweat after a hard day of working at their excavation site was the bouquet of his earliest memories. 

He had loved that tent, before the cover stone of death had come crashing down to destroy his childhood.

 

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The next tent he could recall was of gray green canvas in a tropical Mexican jungle. It's walls were pulled tight by cotton ropes across steel tent poles and it was foreign to the land. When the moist breezes blew, the heavy, stiff fabric would snap and complain of the imposition of its visit. As if in answer, the wind of the jungle would cry and moan and whistle its objection as it passed through the stark, unnatural structure. 

But after the days work was finished, from inside the tent came different noises, human sounds. They were sounds of the lively infectious laughter of young people that often spilled out into the night. Teasing affection, contagious ribald jokes and witty repartee of youthful intellectuals that had come to seek, study and learn the ancient ways of the indigenous peoples who had lived here in this exotic country so many ages ago. 

They had come under the auspices of their University to learn the secrets of the past but they had also taken the opportunity to plumb the mysteries of their fast approaching adulthood. Often the scents of tequila, sex and the smoke of the Cannabis plant distilled together to create a wanton air of youth and experimentation. 

It had bothered him a little, this mixing of his heritage and their modern sensibilities but his naive curiosity won out and he fell victim by association to their uninhibited research into the baser visceral instincts of the human animal.

Then, later in the dark of the night, other lessons were taught and learned in the tent. Instructions in passion, in the celebration of youth and ultimately in the selfishness of immaturity were taught. The class was given cheaply by a blonde woman and a blackhaired man but it came at the high cost of his lost innocence and self-esteem. Because ultimately when it was over, the instructors were gone and the emptiness had returned. 

It left him with nothing more to show for the education than an aching head, a debauched body and a bruised heart.

 

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He had found his wife in her father's tent. It was woven from the thick curly hair of a mastage and pitched on an alien planet. She had come to him in the night, a gift fit for a god. He had received her in his ignorance and she had offered him her virginity. Misunderstanding the gift, he had unwittingly caused her shame by his refusal to consummate the ancient sacrifice. 

But they had none the less found their love in the pyramidal shelter of the desert. After the great conflict between the slaves and their god, her father had honored him and blessed them in their union of hearts. The night wind blew gently over the shelter singing a long forgotten song of welcome. The voice of his new world whispered the acceptance of home to him and bade him find peace in his new existence. 

Here he had found acceptance, love, honor and family...things he had never expected to experience under the extraterrestrial sky with its twin moons. During the day, he labored to learn the ancient hidden mysteries of his new people and by night he experienced the uxorious pleasures of a true loving match made in some romantic heaven.

Then once again, the walls had come crashing down to cast him out, alone and lonely, into the darkness.

 

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The next tent had been of nylon. It was green and silken and shiny and modern with aluminum ribs, parachute cords and plastic stakes. Its voice was the slick sound of slippery rustling as his sleeping bag brushed across the flooring and the rasping sound of its zipper as he entered its sterile world after his watch. Outside the snug shelter, the winds of strange planets sang to him of his quest for his stolen wife, giving him the hope and courage to go onward.

Always, the first sounds he heard at daybreak were the voices of his comrades-in-arms as they greeted each other in the early mornings hours of a mission. He could hear the crackling fire, the metallic clink of the tin coffeepot on its matching cups. He could hear the sonorous tones of the guard mount as he greeted the early morning risers, the woman's soft voice and the other man's low chuckle. And soon, their banter would give way to a gentle summonsing by his leader. It was always a teasing, chivying tone meant to awaken a slumbering scholar from his rest without too much shock or annoyance. The voice elicited a warmth that almost filled the emptiness in his heart for his lost love. 

A love that was again ripped from his being with the sound of a staff weapon's blast.

 

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He had been lost with no past, no future and no memory. They had found him naked and alone and brought to the tent in the ruined city of Vis Uban. The people had accepted him but couldn't give him anything but the now of his present. His previous life, all that he had known was lost to him and its ghost haunted him at night even as the wind taunted him with its omnipotent presence.

Some nights, as he sat outside the cloth walls, he could almost reach out and touch it. It seemed so close, yet it remained ephemeral to his grasp, shifting and hiding like the stars behind the clouds. He could hear sounds that didn't exist, smell scents that were not there and taste flavors he didn't know. 

This tent, this was all he knew. These people, they were all he knew. All that he was, was here, all that he knew was this tent.

Then the strangers came. They said they knew him, they said they wanted him, they said he was important. So he went with them, and he remembered.

He remembered many things. Some things were good, some things were bad, and some things were tragic. Then he began to see things as they were, things that were hidden from casual view. 

He could see behind the masks that they all wore.

 

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He awoke in the tent. It was green and silken and shiny and modern with aluminum ribs, parachute cords and plastic stakes. Its voice was the rasping sound of its zipper as someone entered its sterile world after his watch. There was a slight whisper of cotton material as clothing was removed. Then, the slick sound of slippery rustling as the other sleeping bag brushed across the flooring drawing itself next to his own. A cool arm insinuated itself into his bedroll to gently stroke his bicep and a warm voice murmured his name. 

"Daniel, you awake?"

"Yes," he rolled over to face the man who now lay next to him, watching him intently. "I was just thinking." 

There was a moment of silence as their lips touched sweetly, and their mouths moved against each other.

"Of what?"

"Tents."

the end.


End file.
